Getting everything we want for free sure would be sweet.

John Howe, General Manager Investment Strategy and Projects for Metro Toronto’s Metrolinx, said there is solid public resistance in Toronto to all new transportation funding sources, even though congestion is the #1 problem in the region, with an 82-minute average commute.

“Sound familiar?”, Ladner asks. Indeed it does. Of course, there’s nothing odd about this at all. What could be more common than wanting everything, and wanting it all for free?

This, by the way, is what’s so cynical about the province’s review dodge. Saying that Translink wastes money by being inefficient or paying its executives too much is a way of suggesting that metro Vancouver could get the transit infrastructure we want without having to pay any extra money for it. (If only Translink were more efficient! ) It’s a way for politicians like Campbell and Bond to direct Vancouverites’ attention away from difficult choices, instead of clarifying those choices for us and helping us to make them. The review dodge really is politics at its most lazy and most cowardly.